


Paradise Found

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Established Relationship, F/F, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Something was lost here, but Eve knows it all the same.
Relationships: Eve/Mazikeen (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	Paradise Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redledgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/gifts).



> Thanks to [emynii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii) for looking this over!

It’s not as green as it once was. The air is hot and dry, ash and sulfur. The rivers have long since diverted. The trees are nothing more than a memory, replaced by cracks in the earth that might have come from bombs. Or maybe just excavation. Humans working the earth to their own uses. Something was lost here, but Eve knows it all the same. 

“This it?” Maze asks behind her, climbing the ridge with her casual manner. She’s in leather, halter top to booted foot, daring anyone to object. No one yet has dared. Even Eve has forgone heels for sturdy hiking shoes, lifting her skirts to clamber over loose stone. 

“Yeah,” she says softly when she reaches a flat place, looking around. The grass is sparse and paled by lack of rain, interspersed by thorny brush. In the distance, rocky cliffs rise out of the ground; some of the tan stone was clearly used to build the nearby village. It’s not at all like it used to be, but it is still beautiful.

Maze glances up at the hot sun, at the pristine blue sky, no cloud in sight, and scoffs. She’s still not sure what the point of this is, not that she’d ever say. Not that she’s really complained at all—not through the long flight, the crowded bus ride, the hike into midday heat. She might not understand, but she’s  _ trying. _ And that’s what really matters. “Doesn’t look like much.”

“No,” Eve says, frowning. This  _ must  _ be it according to everything she could find, but she still doesn’t really see it. She dips her head, stares at the ground, tries to mark out familiar features like on the face of an old friend. But it’s been such a long time. Too long, maybe. So much has happened since then, for her, for this place.

“Do you...feel anything?” Maze ventures awkwardly.

Eve’s frown deepens, and she closes her eyes, tries something like mindfulness, like what Linda told her to do instead of just running out again. Staying in the moment, not losing herself to the past or the future. But nothing happens. Maybe Maze was right, and they should have smuggled in some weed. At least then she’d  _ think  _ she was having some kind of sublime experience, even if its source is less than divine.  _ Something  _ that was worth coming all this way. She sighs and settles on a flat stone. “I dunno.”

Maze nods in her comradely sort of way, sits next to Eve, and claps her on the back. “We can still go to Baghdad, see the museums. Do all that tourist shit. Lucifer has a place in Dubai we can break into. Got a pool and everything. Or, uh...”

“It’s okay, Maze.” Eve’s lips thin as she tries to hide her disappointment. “We came. We saw. That’s all I really wanted.”

“Maybe we could—“

“No, really, it—”

“You know, I bet  _ he _ could tell you exactly where it is,” Maze grumbles, making to stand. “I’ll get his ass here, don’t worry. Bastard spent long enough...”

_ “Maze.” _ Eve puts her hand on Maze’s arm. Her tirade peters out, she slumps back to the rock, and her lips part in apology. But Eve already knows, so she kisses her to stop the words. “Thank you.”

“But I didn’t…”

“Yeah, you did.” Eve looks at her feet, cheeks heating. “Just, thanks. For...I don’t know, for indulging me, I guess.”

“Of course,” Maze says quietly, her voice nearly lost as the wind picks up.

It’s still almost unbearably hot, but Eve doesn’t want to move from this spot. Move away from Maze. Doesn’t want to admit this was a failure. Or maybe doesn’t want to admit that she doesn’t even really know why she wanted to come here in the first place. The garden is gone. It has been for millennia. That’s the whole point.

If it hadn’t been, it wouldn’t be so dry and hot. The air wouldn’t smell so much like ash and sulfur. The rivers wouldn’t have fled so far away. There would be trees, not craters crafted by human destruction. Nothing would have been lost, not here, not anywhere. No one would ever die at all. All because she...

No. She shakes her head. Maze looks up at her, confused, when she stands. When she kicks a rock down the hill a little viciously before turning to head up, over a higher ridge. If the garden were still here, all these people wouldn’t be, and neither would their villages. If the garden were still here, the plane and the bus and the museums wouldn’t exist. If the garden were still here,  _ she  _ would still be here, no friends, no Maze. Only Adam. Forever. Nothing would be lost because there wouldn’t be anything left to lose.

“Eve, wait up!” Maze calls, but she’s almost running now, tripping over gravel and brush. She falls and scrapes her knee, but she gets back up. The blood, too, wouldn’t be here if the garden remained. Nor would the pain. But she doesn’t care. She hasn’t for a long time. It’s worth it. It’s worth all of it. It always has been.

Eve crests the ridge breathing hard, hair a tangle in her face from wind and sweat. She clasps her hands to her thighs, panting, as Maze joins her.

“The hell you doing?” Maze asks. She must’ve been more worried than she likes to pretend. This thing they have between them is strong, now, but Eve knows sometimes Maze still thinks it’s all going to fall apart. That she’ll mess up. That Eve will run away again. That it’ll end up as desolate and foreign as this hill where paradise once stood.

But Eve knows how paradise is lost, and she’s not going to let that happen. Not this time. Not when it’s finally what she wants. Not when it’s  _ real. _

“I just...I needed to know,” Eve breathes, standing. “I needed to see.”

Maze nods, hesitates, then pulls Eve into her arms. It’s hot and stuffy, and Maze’s grip is almost bruising, but Eve never wants it to end. When Maze pulls back, she’s got that hard look on her face like she’s trying not to cry. “I-I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted.”

“But I did.” A tear drips down her cheek, and she buries it in Maze’s shoulder. “Maybe we  _ could  _ go see Lucifer’s place?”

“Whatever you want to do,” Maze says, voice muffled against Eve’s hair.

“That’d be fun, right?”

_ “Very _ fun.” She can feel Maze’s breath against her neck, can feel her growing smirk against her hair. It speaks of poolside parties and fancy cocktails, skimpy bikinis and not being able to keep their hands off each other. It’s a beautiful temptation, and she’s always glad to give into it. But even as Maze presses a kiss to her temple, Eve pulls away.

She has to try one more time before she gives it up.

This time, she stands at the exact apex of the hill, puts her arms out, and spins. Less a dance than a prayer, not to the sky, not to the underworld, but to the desert air around her, to the earth beneath her feet.  _ Please,  _ it says.  _ Please let me understand. Please let me see what I couldn’t before. _

And then, she sees it.

That ridge to the north—hadn’t she climbed it once to see how far the garden stretched? Maybe even to see what lay beyond? And that low place in the east, the one marked by long-ago erosion—didn’t she often sit upon the bank of the Tigris to look at her reflection in its waters? There, she knelt on soft earth and screamed at a God who never answered. Here, she stood and looked up at a starry sky before Lucifer came down with a question that would change everything.

She comes to a sudden halt, panting hard. And she sees something else. Off to the south, in a hollow she might have slept in thousands of years ago, is a tree. Not a great, tall, proud tree like the ones in the garden, but a tree nonetheless. She stumbles down the hill in something of a trance, Maze following behind her.

She can hear the birds sing, all those years ago. The water tumbling over the rocks. She can almost smell the sweet fragrance of paradise as she approaches the tree, even if it’s not been real for millennia. The tree is short, not much taller than Maze is, and the trunk is twisted, the bark pale. The roots cry out for water, but the leaves are broad and dark. And there is fruit, however small.

“A tree?” Maze asks, frowning.

“A fig tree,” Eve replies, running her fingers over the nearest branch. It hangs low, heavy even with its meager fruit, with promise, with hope.

_ Of every tree in the garden, you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in that day you will surely die. _

It  _ had  _ felt like death for a long time, expelled, cast into the wilderness, even before death had finally, truly come. But this new life she’s made, with her friends, with Maze—she has never felt so alive. Before, she had made a Hell of Heaven, but now, here, she makes her own paradise. 

She reaches up, past the lower branches, and plucks the finest of the fruit, testing its suppleness before she twists the stem free. She holds it in her hand, warm and ever-so-slightly soft, nearly bursting with its sweetness. It smells heavenly, no, better than Heaven. Better than paradise. Here and real and  _ together. _

She turns away from the tree, toward Maze instead. Still waiting, even if she doesn’t understand. Like Eve had waited once, not understanding, but willing to try. But this time there will be no fall. No loss. Only the wilderness _they_ choose. She steps closer, leans up. Maze dips her head down for a kiss, but Eve holds up the fig instead.

“Will you taste the fruit?” she asks.

Maze hisses in a breath and whispers. “Yes.”

“Then take a bite.” She presses the fig to her mouth.

As Maze eats, as juice drips down her chin and over Eve’s fingers, Eve thinks about the garden. About paradise. About Heaven and Hell and Earth. She has seen more of Creation than she was ever made for. They both have. And when they were finally given a chance, they lost everything. But they’re together now, in this place that used to be called paradise, and they don’t need someone else’s idea of Eden.

Something was found here, and Eve won’t let it go.


End file.
